


23:  Don't Talk Me Out of It

by light_source



Series: High Heat [23]
Category: Baseball RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Hawaii, M/M, Morning Sex, San Francisco Giants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-24
Updated: 2011-09-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 00:00:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/light_source/pseuds/light_source
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And suddenly, blessedly, it’s good to be alone out here suspended in this astonishing place between the sky and the sea, where the rise and fall of the swell rhymes with his own breath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	23:  Don't Talk Me Out of It

Just before dawn, a rooster screeches them awake, crowing right outside Zito’s bedroom window.

\- Shit. This is how humans got the idea for KFC, says Zito, sleepy, cranky, rubbing his eyes.  - Observe the chicken, the state bird of Hawaii.

He pulls his pillow around his head in a vain attempt to muffle the sound.

It’s still dark outside. Tim, who’s been sleeping on his stomach, turns over with a groan and grabs for his watch.

\- Five-thirty, Tim says. - Fuck.

Zito gets up, wraps himself in a sheet, and shuffles over to the half-open window. He pushes open the curtains from the casement, and in the faint pink light from the east, Tim sees him take something from the chair sitting below it. When the rooster launches into another verse of his aria, Zito’s left arm flashes, and there’s a thud, some squawks, and the sound of wings flapping.

- _Got him,_ says Tim.

\- Yeah, but not for long, says Zito, grinning sleepily. - That’s the third time I’ve hit him. I know it’s him, by the way - he’s the one with the green tail. He’s like fucking Matt Kemp. You can strike him out, but he keeps coming back up to bat.

\- And I’m almost out of shoes, he continues, - only one left. I should probably go shag the ones I already threw at him, but I keep forgetting. It’s Hawaii, he says, rubbing his unshaven chin ruefully, - and there’s just not that many places to wear shoes.

-One-pitch out, says Tim. - You’re _good_ , dude.

His feet tangled in the loose sheet, Zito stumbles back to the bed, and Tim catches him as he collapses, and they’re laughing. They haul the covers over themselves, arms colliding and legs thrashing, seeking each other’s warmth.

The dawn quiet is broken only by the stirring of songbirds outside, and the sounds of the house creaking awake in the rising sun.

\- I’m going back to sleep, mumbles Zito, pulling the coverlet up to his chin, snuffling his pillow with a contented sound. He rolls onto his side, one knee up, his back to Tim.

Tim curls himself into the double bascule of Zito’s back and legs, marveling at the way their bodies fit together, and slides one hand under Zito’s arm. His fingers find the one spot that’s ticklish, right above Barry’s hipbone, and spider lightly across it. Zito’s whole body knots up around the tickle, and he’s howling, awake now, squirming in protest.

\- You could always have a nap later, says Tim, his voice unexpectedly deep and quiet.

Zito feels Tim’s tongue on the nape of his neck, and then it's swirling around his earlobe, Tim's mouth hot and wet against Zito’s chilled skin. With his wiry upper arms, he holds Zito in place while his hands travel tantalizingly over Zito’s chest and belly, stroking. He licks his fingertips and uses them to tease Zito’s nipples till they’re rock-hard and he’s groaning a little - fuck, he’s ready to beg - and Zito feels Tim’s lips curling into a sly smile against his neck. Tim buries his nose in the skin between Zito’s shoulder blades, breathing him in.

\- You smell so good, murmurs Tim. - Makes me crazy.

By now Tim’s cock is swollen and heavy, pressing into Zito’s ass, hips thrusting, and his breath is ragged in Zito’s ear. When Tim’s hand travels round to caress his jaw, Zito turns his head and sucks Tim’s fingers into his mouth. The feel of Zito’s swirling tongue on his fingers is almost too much - it makes Tim moan - and in response he launches his mouth up the nape of Zito’s neck for a kiss that has some bite in it.

Zito takes Tim’s hand in his own, licks his open palm extravagantly, and guides it down to his own hard cock, whose aching need for touch has shoved every other thought out of his mind. And now Tim’s slick fist is working his hard-on, his tongue’s swirling in Zito’s ear, and he’s bucking his hips hard against Zito’s ass. It’s so good that Zito can only take a few strokes before he comes hot and wet in Tim’s hand, his own hips thrusting, mindless with pleasure, his mouth agape.

As Zito drifts slowly back to consciousness, his eyes half-closed and a half-smile on his face, Tim’s arms tighten around him, and Tim’s mouth eases back, leaving a trail of kisses on the side of his neck. When he turns over, Tim’s eyes are open to meet his for a moment, dark, still clouded by desire. When Tim closes his eyes and offers his open mouth to be kissed, Zito feels a catch in his throat. He pauses for a moment, and then Zito kisses him with inexpressible gentleness on his closed eyelids, the corner of his mouth, on his soft, vulnerable upper lip. Tim murmurs wordlessly, luxuriating in the sweetness of it.

Then, when Tim opens his eyes again and presses into Zito's mouth with more intensity, wanting, and their tongues collide, Zito feels adrenaline course through him, as though he’s watching himself plunge from a great height.

 _\- That,_ murmurs Tim, feeling Zito’s mouth and hands on his cock, _\- mmm._ Zito sinks gratefully down into the baking-bread fragrance of sex and boy and sleep.

And as he feels Tim arching against the mattress, his hands worrying the sheets as he comes, gasping for breath, Zito thinks he can find it in his heart to forgive the rooster.

//

\- So the ancient Hawaiians had this concept, _kapu,_ intones Brian in his teacherly voice. If you got caught doing _kapu_ \- murder, rape, eating the wrong thing, your shadow touching a nobleman, that kind of stuff - they’d put you to death. But if you could make it here to the City of Refuge, they had to forgive you. So if you were really desperate, he says - it was kind of your last hope. I hear the waters around here used to be shark-infested too, he adds, - so that added an extra element of drama. You had to be able to swim fast.

\- Or have four-wheel drive and a gun, says Dallas.

Brian swats him with his towel.

The four of them have cut across the white-sand beach to a finger of black volcanic boulders that beckons out into the surf. Carefully, because the rock's slashing into their feet, they clamber out to its point. There Braden finds a scattering of flat rocks where they can strap on their fins and masks. A patch of deeper blue water below them hints at a drop-off.

Zito spits in the lenses of his goggles and rubs them with the hem of his dive shirt.

\- Ready?

Braden slips into the water first, and then Brian, quietly, almost without a splash. The white fabric of their shirts balloons a little above their backs as they kick away from the rocks.

The seawater makes Tim feel weightless as a bird, hovering on the boundary of the water world. The cross-current heaves him along the surface like a piece of flotsam, and the fins make him fast and agile, a magic human fish. The sea floor is walled by a blackish reef bristling with plants, their leaves swirling, and as he looks around he realizes he’s surrounded by moving curtains of fish so nearby he could touch them. They veer close, then abruptly shift their bulbous, incurious eyes away like big-city pedestrians, and let him pass. His skin looks foreign to him, as gray as an eel’s in the sunlight that pierces shafts of white through the water. It’s nearly silent, this world. The only sound is the bubble and hiss of his own breath.

As he pushes farther out from shore, Tim loses track of where he ends and this realm begins. He’s seen pictures of the sea before, sure, but now it seems like a new world has opened all around him. The ocean floor drops away gradually at first, then steeply, so that he’s higher and higher even though he’s not rising. Schools of iridescent fish wheel their way around him through patches of light and dark, striped with the motion of the water. There are some big sharklike fish too, brown and gray and sinister-looking, but they keep their distance. Tim’s surprised to see his own shadow crisp against the white-sand floor, drifting ahead of him as the waves push him out.

Time passes, and then more time. It’s only the sight of his watch on his own unfamiliar-looking wrist that finally brings Tim back to reality with a jolt - how far out has he actually come? He pushes up to the surface, spits out the silicone mouthpiece, and practically eats the air. As he’s rinsing his mask, he has to squint to see the black line of rocks, far away, and beyond them, the shore. No one else is in sight. Not even close. For a long moment, panic swells in his throat and his skin prickles cold in spite of the lambent water.

It takes effort to haul his eyes away from the shoreline, but he makes himself do it, and then he slides onto his back to float. Using his hands to scull, he forces himself to look up at the clouds and the sky expanding behind them. He’s pulling the water around himself, he thinks, like a blanket. _Above us, only sky,_ he hears in his mind’s ear. The song unfolds itself complete inside him, a memory he didn’t know he had.

After a while, his heartbeat slows to match the tempo of the song. And then, to his surprise, he’s no longer afraid.

It’s a new feeling, strange, as he realizes that very little is enough to keep him floating peacefully here. And suddenly, blessedly, it’s good to be alone out here suspended in this astonishing place between the sky and the sea, where the rise and fall of the swell rhymes with his own breath.

//

Sunburned and famished from their day on the beach, the four of them are now sitting on the lanai of the Aloha Angel café in Kealakekua, finishing up a mammoth breakfast even though it’s five-thirty in the afternoon. A gecko prowls along the edge of the table, eyeing a dollop of strawberry jam that Tim’s left on his plate. Zito keeps slapping at his arms and legs, swearing; the café is crawling with the locals’ dogs and their fleas, and he’s been ready to leave for half an hour already. But the waitress keeps topping off their Kona coffee, and Dallas, the skinny-boy bottomless pit, is scraping everyone else’s half-finished home fries onto his own plate.

\- Coconut syrup, says Dallas with a sigh, spearing a last bite of uneaten waffle off Tim’s plate. - I gotta remember that.

\- Tonight, says Brian, - Moses Kahumoku’s playing tonight down at some church hall in Miloli’i, and I‘m thinking that this is an event that should not be missed by us.

\- Stupid question, I know, says Tim, - but who the fuck is Moses Kahumoku?

Brian rolls his eyes. - Dude, Moses Kahumoku is the Bob Dylan of slack-key guitar. The Big Island’s answer to Johnny Cash. _Yea_ , he says, pronouncing it biblically - Hawaii’s own Jimmy Webb.

\- Jimmy Webb? says Zito. - Isn’t he the guy who wrote “Wichita Lineman”?

\- Well done, Zeets, so he is.  Moses does most of his work in open G.  So who’s coming?

\- I’m in, says Dallas.

\- It’s a couple hours' drive, says Brian. - We should probably stay down there. Not sure I want to drive back on the belt road on a Friday night, what with the highway being two lanes and people drinking and doing what people do on Friday nights.

Dallas raises his eyebrows and his mouth twists. In November, on a trip they’d taken together to Ireland, he and Brian had had a narrow miss. A local galoot tanked on Guinness had smashed into their rental car out in the middle of nowhere. They’d been lucky to walk away from the crash.

Zito glances across the table at Tim, who’s got the gecko interested in his finger by dipping it in the strawberry jam, but Tim doesn’t look up.

\- Great idea, says Zito, returning his attention to Brian, - but somebody’s gotta pick up Nate at the airport at six-thirty.

\- Oh, yeah, says Brian. - Can’t not do that.  Reality principle.  Timmy?

\- I think I’ll stay, says Tim carefully. He’s a little confused. Brian’s eyes are on him, that piercing blue gaze that makes him feel like he’s on the spot. He’d like to go, and he doesn’t want Brian to think he’s staying to be with Zito, but he also doesn’t want to be a third wheel. He flushes a little.Jesus _fuck_. He knows the tips of his ears are probably bright red, and he hates how grateful he feels when the waitress finally shows up to distract everyone, stretching her arms across him to take their plates.

//

\- Jeez, Timmy, I didn’t even recognize you, says Nate, clapping a hand against his back. Nate’s eyes are red-rimmed and lined with tiredness, and his gait’s still a little stiff from the long plane journey. To Tim, who’s been here for less than a week, Nate looks like a refugee from a place where people are driven, desperate, because they live too far from a good place to surf.

Tim’s wearing Rainbows and board shorts and an inside-out aloha shirt he got for six bucks at the Salvation Army store in Kailua town, and his hair’s still seawater-wild. Nate’s right, somehow; Tim’s skin has darkened in the island sun, and he's starting to look like a _kama'aina_ , a local. With his black hair and dark eyes, his silver rings and leather bracelets, he fades right into the crowd milling around here in the grassy parking lot next to the Ohana Grocery.

They're on their way back to the house from the airport, and they’ve stopped off at a makeshift farmer’s market where they’re buying apple-bananas and papayas out of the backs of flatbed trucks, and some fresh swordfish that Zito thinks he might grill tonight.

\- Yeah, says Zito, - Tim does kind of belong here. You definitely need more tattoos, though, dude.

\- How would _you_ know, Barry? says Tim quietly, pushing back a little, surprising himself. Nate smiles thoughtfully at Tim, holding the gaze a moment, and then shifting his eyes to Zito, who doesn’t engage. His brow’s furrowed, and he’s busy exchanging a fistful of cash for the big paper-wrapped parcel of fish.

\- My grandfather was born here, Tim says to Nate, ending the awkward pause. - It's not like he was Hawaiian or anything - my great-grandparents came here from the Phillippines to work in the sugar fields. A lot people did, I guess. My grandpa still misses it, still says he wishes he hadn’t moved to the mainland.  But he needed the work.

\- Why would anyone leave this place unless they had to? says Zito. - I’m thinking of tearing up my ticket. Do me a favor and don’t talk me out of it, he says, his good humor restored, putting an arm around each of their shoulders.

//

Tim doesn’t knock, but simply pushes Zito’s door open quietly, and the moonlight is sufficient to show him Zito’s already in bed. He slips off his boxers and slides under the covers, shivering a little; it’s raining again, and everything cools here in the rainy times, even skin warm from the shower. Zito’s arms are already open, waiting to wrap him close, and he fits his head in the crook of Zito’s shoulder, that place where it fits perfectly, as if this was the way it was supposed to be.  As if.

\- Your hair’s wet, says Zito, his hands in it, stroking, his thumbs pushing back from Tim’s temples as he leans in for a kiss. Tim smells like soap and toothpaste, and his breath fills the hollow of Zito’s mouth, sweet and arousing at the same time. But as they sink back together onto the pillows, Zito realizes the wetness isn’t just in Tim’s hair; his cheeks are wet, and his eyelashes.  Barry pulls away.

\- What? says Zito, a little alarmed, trying to make out Tim's expression in the very faint grey light.

There's a pause while Tim thinks about what he wants to say.  He decides against it.

\- I want to tear up my ticket too, says Tim, leaning in to kiss the corner of Zito's eye. - Don’t talk me out of it, OK?


End file.
